Motorcycles are cool. They’ve always been cool and they always will be cool–but why? With the wind billowing through your hair, leather fringe flapping on your pants, and a lit cigarette dangling from your lip, it’s tough to contemplate every reason a motorcycle is cool, but I can speculate that it’s got something to do with the perfect combination of freedom, danger, and diesel. 

As we get older and vehicles are all going electric, it’s impossible not to imagine a far-off time of fearless frivolity from behind the handlebars where wild folks show everyone the meaning of true freedom. That’s why we love our vintage bikes. Perhaps the aging motorcycles remind us that we’re still the old-school bad boy we always were, breathing life into our barbed-wire tattoos and our crackling leathers. So pour one out for the bikes that didn’t survive the vintage era and reminisce on some biker nostalgia–keep scrolling for a scrapbook of some timeless coolness of biker bliss.